For a club run by retail mogul Mike Ashley, it perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise to say Newcastle United have been incredibly shrewd over the last few weeks.
The man who runs the Sports Direct empire is known for conducting the odd bit of cut price business, and for years tried to run the St. James' Park club as a giant city centre store. But instead of dealing in the finestLe Coq Sportif shell suit, he traded footballers.
Stock 'em high, sell 'em cheap may be the mantra of Ashley's retain chain, but at United it was all about finding undervalued assets and selling them on for big money. Yohan Cabaye is the perfect example of this.
But in the past few days, the attention has shifted to finding those who have favourable release clauses in their contracts, which Mohamed Diame from Hull City and Ciaran Clark from Aston Villa do.
TheChroniclehas reported that Toon manager Rafa Benitez is close to completing deals for both players, who have been first team regulars at their respective clubs.
Diame seems like the more obvious buy for Newcastle, and it's not yetapparentwhere Clark will fit intothe first team squad as the Magpies already have three senior central defenders at their disposal.
What's more impressive is thatUnited have cherry picked from the best available players, strengthening their own team and weakening promotion rivals. Grant Hanley was plucked from Blackburn Rovers, who were reluctant sellers, and no doubt the same will be true of the Tigers and the Villa Park locals.
By buying experience, and not just potential, Benitez has signalled a real power shift away from Ashley and his cronies and towards the men who run things on the ground. Steve McClaren would have never been allowed to buy Diame and Clark, who are 29-years-old and 26-years-old respectively.
Their experience and knowledge of the English game could have kept the Tyneside outfit in the Premier League last season, but Benitez will have to settle for them lifting his team out of the Championship and back into the promised land.
Should these deals go through, it will be a real throwback to the days when Graham Carr used to get deals right. Ashley has made his name through ruthlessly exploiting weakness to land great, cut price deals.
How fitting that it would take something similar to show him where he's been going wrong all this time.